Chapter 8: Regular Expressions

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 Introduction to Regular Expressions
• Regular expressions are patterns that only
certain commands are able to interpret
• Patterns should be protected by strong
quotes (single quotes)
• Regular expressions are expanded to match
certain sequences of characters in text
• The grep command is very useful in
demonstrating regular expressions

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 The grep command
• The grep command displays all lines that
match a regular expression (sys* as below):
$grep sys* /etc/passwd
sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/usr/sbin/nologin
syslog:x:101:104::/home/syslog:/bin/false
sysadmin:x:1001:1001:System Administrator,,,,:/home/sys
admin:/bin/bash
• Use the --color option to highlight what
the regular expression matched
• Examples in this presentation use the --
color option by default via an alias
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 Types of regular expressions
• Two primary types:
- Basic Regular Expressions (regex)
- Extended Regular Expressions (extended regex)
• Some commands only support Basic
• Use grep -E or egrep to use Extended

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 Basic Regular Expressions
Basic Regex Character(s) Meaning
. Any one single character
[] Any one specified character
[^ ] Not the one specified character
* Zero or more of the previous character
^ If first character in the pattern, then pattern must
be at beginning of the line to match, otherwise
just a literal "^"
$ If last character in the pattern, then pattern must
be at the end of the line to match, otherswise just
a literal "$"
\ Treat the special character after “\” literally

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 Example of grep
• Display all lines of the /etc/passwd file
that contain the expression "root":
$grep root /etc/passwd
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
operator:x:1000:37::/root:

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 Anchor example
• Use the "^" anchor to make sure that this
pattern "root" appears at the beginning of
the line:
$grep ^root /etc/passwd
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

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 Anchor example
• Use the "$" anchor to make sure that this
pattern "root" appears at the end of the line:
$grep $’bash’ /etc/passwd
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
sysadmin:x:1001:1001:System Administrator,,,,:/h
ome/sysadmin:/bin/bash

Note: in the example above, bash must be placed

in single quotes due to the special nature of the $
character to the shell
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 . example
• Use the . character to match any character
(except for the new line character):
$grep ro.. /etc/passwd
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
proxy:x:13:13:proxy:/bin:/usr/sbin/nologin
operator:x:1000:37::/root:

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 [ ] example
• Use the [ ] characters to match any character
of a specific set of characters:
$grep chapter[1-5] bookfile
chapter1
chapter2
chapter3
chapter4
chapter5

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 [ ] example
• If the first character inside the square
brackets is the "^", then it negates the
characters
$grep chapter[^1-5] bookfile
chapter6
chapter7
chapter8

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 * example
• The * character match zero occurrences of
the character (or pattern) that precedes it:
$grep sys* /etc/passwd
sys:x:3:3:sys:/dev:/usr/sbin/nologin
syslog:x:101:104::/home/syslog:/bin/false
sysadmin:x:1001:1001:System Administrator,,,,:/h
ome/sysadmin:/bin/bash

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Extended Regular Expressions
Summary
Extended Regex Character(s) Meaning
+ One or more of the previous pattern
? The preceding pattern is optional
{} Specify minimum, maximum or exact
matches of the previous pattern
| Alternation - a logical "or"
() Used to create groups

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 + example
• The + character match one or more
occurrences of the character (or pattern) that
precedes it

Example Result

egrep ‘[a-z]+ing’ file Displays all lines having one or

more letters followed by “ing.” (i.e.
ring, learning, computing, etc.)

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 ? example
• The ? character matches zero or one
occurrence of the character (or pattern) that
precedes it

Example Result

egrep ‘bel?ville’ file Displays all lines containing

“belville” or “bellville.”

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 { } example
• The { } character are used to specify how
many times to repeat the previous character
or pattern
Curly Brace Other Regex Equivalent Meaning
Example

'a{0,}' 'a*' Zero or more 'a' characters

'a{1,}' 'a+' One or more 'a' characters
'a{0,1}' 'a?' Zero or one 'a' characters
'a{5}' N/A Five 'a' characters
'a{,5}' N/A Five or fewer 'a' characters
'a{3,5} N/A From three to five 'a' characters

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 | example
• The | character matches either one
expression or another

Example Result

egrep ’64|128’ file Displays all lines containing either

“64” or “128.”

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 ( ) example
• The ( ) characters group patterns together
• They are good when you want to use *, +, ?
or { } on more than one character
• They are also good for limiting scope of |
character
Example Result

egrep ‘(computer|ling)’ file Displays all lines containing either

“computer” or “computing”

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 ( ) example
• Some commands capture what is in ( )
• \1 returns first ( ) match
• \2 returns second ( ) match

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 Special sequences
Backslash Sequence Matches

\b A word boundary

\B Not a word boundary

\w A word character

\W Not a word character

\s A whitespace character

\S Not a whitespace character

\\ A backslash character

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 Special sequences example
• Bad pattern match:

• Using word boundaries:

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 \ example
• The \ character makes the following
character literal (not special):

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 The fgrep command
• The fgrep (fast grep) command always
treats patterns as literal characters, so the
backslash is not needed to “escape” the
characters:

Example Result

fgrep ‘*’ file Displays all lines containing the *

string.

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 Common grep, egrep, & fgrep
options
Option Meaning Example
-i Case insensitive grep –i Root
-v Invert search results (logically grep –v chapter[0-5] bookfile
negates criteria) - returns all lines
that don't contain specified
pattern
-l Display a list of files containing a grep –l Chapters
string
-r Perform a recursive search
including subdirectories
-w Match whole word only grep – w sysadmin /etc/passwd
-q Quietly operate without grep –q ‘linux_enable=“YES”’
producing output. Used in scripts
to check if a line is present

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